All Three Joshua Báez Debut Homers Came Off One Pitcher

The Joshua Báez debut lasted four at-bats, and three of them ended with a baseball in the Wrigley Field bleachers. On Saturday afternoon in Chicago, the 23-year-old Cardinals outfielder became the first player in major league history to homer in each of his first three trips to the plate. St. Louis beat the Cubs 8-4, and nobody walking out of that ballpark was talking about the score.

Here's the part that makes it stranger. All three came off the same pitcher. Cubs left-hander Matthew Boyd threw the first pitch Báez ever saw in the majors and watched it leave at 108.6 mph and land an estimated 449 feet away in center. Boyd faced him again in the third and gave up a 382-foot shot down the left-field line. In the sixth, Báez went the other way for 368 feet.

He finished 3 for 4 with five RBIs, lining out to left in the eighth — the only reason this wasn't a four-homer afternoon. About 30 members of his family were in the stands, including his mother, Yris. The win pushed the Cardinals to 62-61, three games behind the third National League wild card. The Cubs, at 72-52, hold the top one.

One Pitcher, Three Swings, Three Souvenirs

Boyd's refusal to flinch is the quiet subplot. He told reporters afterward that he doesn't attack anybody differently, and he meant it, even after the rookie had already taken him deep twice. What Báez did with those pitches covered the entire field: dead center, then the left-field line, then the opposite way. Power to all three fields in a single game is what scouts spend years trying to project and rarely see confirmed this fast.

The first one is the headline swing. Since ESPN began tracking home run distance in 2006, only two debut homers have gone farther: Jason Heyward's 476-foot drive in 2010 and Aaron Judge's 457-footer in 2016. Both of those men became All-Stars. It also made Báez the first Cardinals position player to homer on the first big-league pitch he saw since Chris Richard back in July 2000.

What the Joshua Báez Debut Actually Broke

Multi-homer debuts are rare but not unheard of. Báez is the eighth player to manage one, and two others hit two in a debut earlier this season alone — Chase DeLauter for Cleveland in March and Jose Fernandez for Arizona days later. The record the Joshua Báez debut owns outright is the sequence: three at-bats, three home runs, nothing in between.

Before Saturday, only two players had homered in each of their first two career at-bats — Bob Nieman of the St. Louis Browns in 1951 and Keith McDonald, also a Cardinal, in 2000. Neither got a third. That's 75 years of near-misses on one side of a line Báez stepped over in roughly two hours of baseball.

"It doesn't quietly whisper. It screams at you when you watch this kid." — Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol

The Long Road From Dorchester to Wrigley

None of this arrived on schedule. Báez was born in Boston, spent part of his childhood in the Dominican Republic, and grew up in Dorchester, about five miles from Fenway Park. He was a known name locally as a teenager — big, strong, and throwing hard enough that some clubs preferred him on the mound. Getting from there to a big-league box score took five years.

A $2.25 Million Bet in the Second Round

St. Louis took him 54th overall in the 2021 draft and signed him for $2.25 million, a figure that told you the front office believed the raw power was real. That's the kind of bonus a team pays when it's willing to wait a long time on the rest of the skill set to catch up.

The Strikeouts That Nearly Stalled Him

Then the waiting got uncomfortable. He struck out in more than a third of his plate appearances at Low-A Palm Beach in 2023 and needed parts of four seasons just to reach High-A. Plenty of second-round bats vanish at exactly that stage. Last year was the turn: 20 homers across High-A and Double-A with the strikeout rate down to 20.6%.

34 Homers in Memphis Before the Call

At Triple-A Memphis this season he hit .256 with 34 home runs, 90 RBIs and 21 stolen bases in 103 games, good for a .901 OPS and the league lead in homers. Baseball America ranked him the 56th-best prospect in the sport entering August. The promotion wasn't a publicity stunt. It was late.

Why the Timing Matters for St. Louis

The Joshua Báez debut also landed at a useful spot on the calendar. Because he came up in mid-August, he keeps rookie eligibility for next season, and CBS Sports notes that puts the Cardinals in line for a bonus draft pick under the Prospect Promotion Incentive if he goes on to win a Rookie of the Year award. For a club one game over .500 and chasing a wild card, the short-term and long-term math point the same way for once.

What to Watch Over His Next 40 Games

Three homers off one left-hander is a spectacular sample with almost no predictive value. The real test starts now, and his minor league record already tells you where it will come: breaking balls away, and how fast big-league advance scouts find the hole in a long swing. His strikeout rate over the next month will say more than his home run total.

So watch the lineup card, not the highlight reel. The question isn't whether Báez hits another 449-foot ball this week — it's whether he's still starting in late September against both lefties and righties. Sunday's series finale at Wrigley is the first look at how the league adjusts, and the first honest read on whether Saturday was the start of a career or just one unforgettable afternoon.